Cool lightwave plugin/previewer !

#321

That does not make sense - if radiosity is enabled there is no need for so many passes and bouncing light trick to simulate radiosity and soft shadows…

#322

Hey guys,

honestly I understand where you’re coming from I really do. But look at it from a pure technical perspective. Pim renders a certain scene with 256 passes AA/MB in under one minute whereas Fprime (albeit under LW 8.5) takes about ten times as much to render the exact same scene.
Now you’re telling me that you rarely need so many passes, well gues what, PIM can render just 35 passes aswell, and still alot faster. I don’t mean to be offensive here, I just don’t see why such an obvious good feature(speed !) is so hard to explain.

#323

Yeah, I understand. In a technical perspective it’s very fast I can see that. I think I just reacted from not seen anything from PiM in quite a while and expecting a realtime thingy, I was just not impressed by the pic that took 1 min to render. But when I see it from this techical point of view it’s really fast, sorry!

If you don’t have LW 9 you should consider to upgrade, with 9.2 and all the other goodies that’s coming in the other 9.x upgrades (for free) it’s worth it.

#324

This is a little off topic, but I just wanted to show how different things works now in LW 9.2.
If you look at the first pic you see it’s just 1 AA pass and 1 MB pass, but it looks alot better then the old system even if they use more passes.

#325

Ok, I’m glad everything’s clear now. The mb in the first pic does look very good idd (that is if it works all the time; including with transparent objects), though I’m not quite sure you can do separate passes for AA and mb is lw 8.5 as you say in the screenshot. Every pass is both an aa , mb and dof pass, right ?

#326

That might be all well in good, but ummm isn’t PIM still vaporware (for lack of a better term)
so therfore any claims of speed are totally not able to be confirmed, nor are customers able to buy PIM, FP3 is for sale now and FP2 has been out for ages…

It’s nice to compare oranges with other fruit, but in this case one is already available to use today.

#327

Yes, it works all the time and with transperacy and reflections. Yes, It’s correct you can’t do separate AA and MB passes in 8.5 or 9.0 (I forgot about that), but you can do it in 9.2.

#328

do you have any date of release?
there will be a demo version?
when we could play with PIM?!

#329

Good to see some life from PIM. The flexibility of PIM to do so many different types of previewing/Rendering should be interesting for lots of people. And we are all waiting to get our hands on it. I know I am.

#330

If Wout hadn’t posted anything, I would have written it off PIM as Vapor ware in a few more months. I guess at this point the idea of feature creep could be playing its hand. It would be great to get some updated info on where PIM stands right now.

Wout is there anyway you can get Enki to post an official update?

#331

Posted by Enki (developer of PIM) at NT-forums, 11-05-2006, 10:11 AM

"PIM’s motion capture features have been developped to fill in some of the blanks left by other popular motion capture applications. That doesnt just mean more polygons and more characters in the live preview, but also perfect integration with all of the other pim features, allowing for e.g. distributed rendering (have actors wear goggles …), over interactive sets (javascript - subscenes), via live video/chromakeying integration to using pim’s audio analyser for live lipsync.

Furthermore, a lot of care has been taken into workflow optimisation, resulting in the mocap core writing out full-featured lws files for every take made. Preparing a new scene for motion capture, or handling the results doesnt require conversions of any kind …

And although I’m still working on the processing core (tuning hidden markov filters, improving IK response, …), I’m told that the results are quickly matching or exceeding those produced by other popular motion capture solutions. Final precision and stability will depend a lot on the motioncapture hardware being used, but the results obtained with some of the better systems (e.g. phasespace) are spectacular.

The mocap core expects raw marker data ( id + position ), and any mocap system providing that can easily be interfaced. ( pim allows you to use own dll’s directly from within the javascript, which makes adding a new mocap driver only slightly more difficult than a walk in the park - often the dll delivered by the mocap system can be used straight from the box. )

And finally, although I cannot give out any specific details, yes the system is designed to be used in motion picture production and is actually being used today by some of the biggest players around."

#332

would be great could track a camara in realtime and use pim with lightwave to do virtual sets in a chroma studio…
something like brainstorm studio does. (www.brainstorm.es)

there are many clients in that way: tv productions & tv stations!!

#333

Hey Guys…

To end some speculation about Pim, and especially the more recent posts about Mocap, it is indeed true, that we have taken Pim to a level that people, weather they have been part of the beta or not, could not have foreseen it go, and there is lots more to come in the future.

Most people that have heard about Pim, see it as some sort of lightwave previewer, which really is just a fortunate by-product of what Pim really is.

We have created a new workflow in our company and feel that pim enables us and our customers to take our creativity further than ever before. To some of you, statements like this will sound like a lot of “Vapour”, and if you are one of those people, I can’t blame you really, I guess its just another way of looking at it. There is always people that work to define and redefine workflows and the applications involved in it.

I know that Enki never imagined the buzz that was created after posting his first video a long time ago, but I can assure you that what is to come in the future, will create even more.

For people that are really interested, jump over to our WWW page, there’s some samples of what we are doing with regards to Mocap and what we call “Loco”. Loco is suite of tools based on Pim, that not only combine existing technologies like motion capture, animation and live action cameras, but actually define an entirely new workflow to streamline productions and enable people to do these productions that would have never been able to do it before.

Thats all the information I want to make public at this point in time though, more will come when we deem it appropriate.

I hope this offers some information that people have been looking for in regards to what is going on. I can assure you that Pim is alive and kicking very well.

Best Regards,

Oliver Hotz
Origami Digital, LLC
www.origamidigital.com

#334

Oliver thanx for keeping this thread going. I think when I read over this thread that all or most are amazed at what we’ve seen posted as examples. Starting almost 2 years ago. And all or most would love some kind of time line for a release. If you’ve got any pull in that department it’d great. Maybe just a very rough ball park, this quarter, next quarter, this year?

#335

as great and interesting as PIM tools look what is the ‘point’ of posting anything on forums etc?

1.it’s closed a beta
2.there’s no release date even vaguely set
3.there’s no even vague price guide…would it be $150 or $15,000 or $150,000 to buy?
4.no lightwave plugin demo version to test.

at best you tease people’s interest which would be not too bad if you deleiver anything at all within 3-4 months…but it’s now over 24 months later and still the same teasing!

it’s wearing so thin now that people are becoming hostile just at the mention of '‘pim tools’ so your marketing is now back firing on you in essence.

either something ‘tangable’ needs to happen right now or you’d be better served by laying low until you have something for people to evaluate.

#336

Yikes.
It would be nice to get some of the info you mentioned, but feeling hostile at the mention of some software??

The ZBrush forums had people getting aggresive when the promised 2.5 didn’t come out for ages…now the same people are praising Pixologic up and down.

Maybe PIM is vapour, but then again, maybe it will be amazing stuff when it finally does arrive…but not priced at $150,000 please. :smiley:

#337

could be another ‘face robot’…we simply havezero information on that aspect…if it’s THAT good…they could just sell to the major studios at a premium pricepoint…

i think it’ll come out at between $6000-$14,000 as it now has the motion capture addition and motion capture ‘anything’ is always top dollar.

market is similar to volumedic for lightwave…a small niche top shelf market.

#338

this would kill a large marketshare for PIM. Imho they should offer the basic previewer for Lw at a low cost, so everyone or so will buy it. Something between 200$ and 400$.
all other features are advanced and they could be part of a complete toolset which could be properly priced.
Anyway i agree: some info please… and a personal praise to offer soon at least previewing part. Since it was already working a lot of time ago, i hope it’s not so far from finish.

thanks,
Paolo

#339

well there’s 2 ways to tackle this…

like that of alias wavefront and microsoft [when they owned softimage] and price it high like what maya was £28,000 per seat or softimage3d which was around £16,000 per seat or to price it low like that of bryce, poser etc and go for lots of ‘users’…

here’s why i believe it will be a high priced product:- support.

supporting 100-1000 seats worldwide is probably doable with only a few people but if was a mass market product then supporting 10,000-40,000 users means they’ll need a large staff.

my thoughts are they’d offer it high then with the generated cash put in place a good support base and maybe make a split or modular version that’s cheaper once they have the ball rolling and have cash coming back in to make it a profitable company…so around 1-2 years after release hi end version may have a lower market version arrive.

xsi did this…only recently has there been a fundamentals version for £300…fund was £1400 ex vat.
maya did this…
brazil did this but offered a lite version too [freeby non commercial]
vray did this.
look at mudbox…less features than z brush but a higher price.

#340

I’d buy just the real time rendering now if it was priced right. It looks plenty functional to me.
I’d even pay a fee to get into the beta program. I would send my first born ( one way to get him out of the house ) to do yard work and car washing.